A You-Tube, Two Stocks, and a Movie June 26, 2006January 15, 2017 Friday we had whales. Today, if you have broadband – monkeys. Highly evolved. (Thanks, Andy Shore.) FMD Suggested here at $38.10 in March, it closed Friday at $56.48. Then again, LEA, suggested last November at $28, closed at $22.74. I am holding both, albeit more of the former than the latter. If you bought them with money you can afford to lose, you should consider holding them also. (If you bought them with money you can’t afford to lose, you’ve been a bad reader. Bad reader. Bad.) If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have.
Listen to the Poets of the Ocean June 23, 2006March 4, 2017 Don’t tell me you can read these snippets without wanting to read the whole thing: . . . humpback whales seem to be using rhyme as a way to help them remember what comes next in their complex songs. Troubadours used the same trick: they put rhymes into the epic poems they memorized because it helped them remember them. . . . the loudest, lowest sounds that whales make can carry across oceans . . . Listening through Navy hydrophones located off the Virginia coast, Chris Clark found that he could hear the lowest notes in the songs of humpback whales that were singing as they migrated out of the Norwegian sea into the Atlantic, thousands of kilometers away. . . . every ocean basin has a unique song that all the humpback whales that live there sing . . . . . . And now Japan is going to kill Humpback whales – the singer/composer/poets – a species the rest of the world values and protects – a species whose songs inspired the world to avoid the catastrophe of the mass extinction of whales. . . . . . . I have put one of the great 1970s songs of the Bermuda Humpback master singers on this website: and have arranged with the company that markets it (Living Music Records), to let you download it free. . . ☞ Dr. Roger Payne has been studying whales for 39 years. You read his open letter . . . and you think back to that day, aged 13, when you dropped a single grain of salt into the pond water under your microscope and watched its teeming life stop dead . . . you see Al Gore’s movie . . . and you consider that there are six times as many of us as there were a century and a half ago, living, on average, perhaps (just guessing here) 20 times heavier on the land – so 120 times the daily impact – and you wonder how the next 1,000 generations (for whom we hold it in care) will fare on our miraculous but fragile planet.
Merger! June 22, 2006March 4, 2017 On April 26, I told you this (skip all but the bold face): Here’s an interesting speculation I do not recommend. I’ve bought some myself, but that’s me. I can’t help myself sometimes. If you buy it and lose, I could never forgive myself. But let me back up. Remember how, in the days of the South Sea Bubble, people were raising money for all manner of ocean-faring expeditions? No? Well, this was the early Eighteenth Century, so even I would have been too young to remember it clearly. (Where is Strom Thurmond when you need him?) But it happened. And one of the ventures was famously undertaken for an enterprise the specifics of which ‘could not be revealed’ – yet found funding anyway. Well, today, apparently, accomplished financiers are raising money for SPAC’s – Single Purpose Acquisition Companies – and, although it is a small and arcane field about which I know very little (where is due diligence when you need it?), I am told it works this way, or at least did in the case of Aldabra Acquisition Corporation: The company is formed by someone with a reputation for being good at this, and raises a bunch of money to make an acquisition – just what acquisition that might be remaining to be seen. In return for their cash, investors get stock and warrants and the promise (if I’ve got this right) that if no acquisition is made within 18 months – the first dozen of which have now passed – yes, their warrants to buy more stock will expire worthless, but they will get their original cash returned to them. So their main risk is losing the use of the cash for eighteen months . . . while, if the acquisition does get done and proves savvy, well, happy days are here again. And what some of the initial investors do, apparently, is sell the warrants in the public market, so that, even if no acquisition is made, they make an immediate 12% or so on their investment, 100% of which is then returned 18 months later. Not so terrible. And if an acquisition is made, their stock itself may rise smartly. They win small or they win big, but they win. So yesterday I bought a bunch of the warrants – ALBAW.OB is the symbol – at 70 cents each, and in an aggregate amount I can afford to lose. I’ve done no research on this except to know that someone smarter than me will lose three times as much if this doesn’t work (famous last words, by the way) . . . and that the people behind all this will lose a million or two in expenses if they don’t wind up concluding an acquisition before the clock runs out. In that sorry case, my 70 cents per warrant is gone. Game over. The gamble is that they will do a deal, and that the warrants will rise smartly when they do. At which point one could either sell them for a short-term capital gain or exercise them and hold the underlying stock in hope of a lightly-taxed long-term capital gain sometime later. That’s it. ‘Ah,’ you’re thinking. ‘It has come to this.’ Well, yes it has: there is a limit to the number of times I can tell you to pay off your credit cards, quit smoking, and buy fuel efficient cars. The occasional SPAC spec adds zest. It is the piquant sauce on an Antoine’s oyster. Well, yesterday they did do a deal – ‘Aldabra Acquisition Corporation to Merge with Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Corporation’ – so that part of the gamble worked out just fine. But the stock and the warrants went down (the warrants are now around 38 cents), which was not how this was supposed to work. You see how hard it is to be greedy? I try so hard to get rich without effort, yet am thwarted at every turn. ‘Great Lakes is the largest provider of dredging services in the United States.’ What the Aldabra people may have missed in selecting this acquisition is that, with the oceans rising (have you seen the movie?), dredging will no longer be required. Why didn’t they merge with Great Lakes Pontoon and Life Raft instead? (I’m not selling.)
Light Summer Reading Thou Shalt Not . . . Something June 21, 2006March 4, 2017 IT’S ALMOST TOO EASY But you have to watch this brief interview of Congressman Lynn Westmoreland (R., GA). Have a nice long day. Happy summer!
Create Your Own June 20, 2006January 15, 2017 TONY SNOW SAYS SOMETHING REALLY, REALLY STUPID Thus spake Tony Snow, as reported in yesterday’s New York Times: ‘The president understands people’s impatience – not impatience but how a war can wear on a nation,’ Mr. Snow said on the CNN program ‘Late Edition.’ ‘He understands that. If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, ‘Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?’ But you cannot conduct a war based on polls.’ Yeah, Tony. ‘Hitler, Schmitler’ was the general attitude back then. Less than five months before the German surrender, few Americans believed in the war and most were wondering, ‘Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?’ Or wait. It was exactly the opposite. I do think that if, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, we had invaded Iraq, people might well have wondered, ‘Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?’ But back then, we struck back at the countries that were striking us and our allies. Of the 19 hijackers, 15 were Saudi, none was Iraqi, and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Yet we rushed to invade Iraq without adequate planning or strength, at disastrous cost to our nation – and, yes, Tony, people are wondering, ‘Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?’ CREATE YOUR OWN $15 MILLION MASTERPIECE Kathryn Lance: ‘Check this one out! Play around with your mouse, see what happens when you left-click, and right-click for more options.’ CREATE YOUR OWN DUST STORM Stephen Gilbert: ‘I hate to mention this, but there was an NPR report the other day on our western deserts. It appears that there are microscopic plants that grow in the deserts that bind the soil and prevent dust storms. Cattle and off-road vehicles destroy these plants. The wind blows and voila: more dust storms than before.’ CREATE YOUR OWN TREE Sergei Slobodov: ‘Just to make it clear: According to the Quantum Mechanics, if a tree falls in the forest and no one can hear it fall, not only there was no sound, there was no tree.’ ☞ Now THAT makes sense. TXCO We first considered this stock in 2004, at $4.50. We sold most of it at various prices between $6.50 and $11. I bought more yesterday at $9.05. It’s a small speculative domestic oil producer, but not as speculative as it once was – and not as widely followed as the big guys. All the usual cautions apply (really!), but I could see it at $20 in two or three years. NOT JUST ROGER EBERT Neal Roach: ‘David Denby, in last week’s New Yorker: ‘Every school, college, and church group, and everyone else beyond the sway of General Motors, ExxonMobil, and the White House should see this movie, and, with luck, they will.’ ‘
Caffeine-Free Diet Coke? Are You Kidding? June 19, 2006March 4, 2017 But first . . . NEW ORLEANS Charles and I went to see Harry Connick, Jr. in one of five final benefit performances of ‘The Pajama Game.’ It was as good in 2006 as it was in 1954. Better! You should hear Harry Connick, Jr. play the piano. (I didn’t see it in 1954 but my parents brought home the original cast recording and I could soon multiply anything by seven and a half cents.) The benefits were for three charities, one of which is the The New Orleans Habitat Musicians’ Village. At the end of our performance – ‘I . . . can hardly wait / to wake and get / to work at eight / NOTHING’s quite like the pa . . . / ja . . . ma . . . game’ – after a long standing ovation, Harry came back out on stage to auction off a limited edition Longines watch, retail value $9,000, which had gone the night before for $17,500 [note to the winner, if he happens to be a reader of this column: you can only deduct the $8,500 by which your donation exceeded the retail value, so it’s best just to give it to another charity and buy a $45 Swatch] and he said that if our audience beat that mark, he’d treat us to some great down home New Orleans jazz. So the bidding started at $1,000 and settled at $36,000 (sold to a New York financier whose grandfather had grown up in New Orleans) and we got to hear some great down home jazz. The $36,000 was enough to build about half a house in New Orleans. Harry Connick, Jr’s project has already built more than 30. Meanwhile, plans have been announced by the Department of Housing and Urban Development – HUD – to tear down 5,000 units of New Orleans public housing. According to this article: . . . HUD’s demolition plans leave thousands of families with no hope of returning to New Orleans, where rental housing is scarce and costly. In New Orleans, public housing was occupied by women, mostly working, their children, as well as the elderly and disabled. . . . . . . Demolition of public housing in New Orleans is not a new idea. When Katrina displaced New Orleans public housing residents, the Wall Street Journal reported US Congressman Richard Baker, a 10-term Republican from Baton Rouge, telling lobbyists: “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” . . . ☞ So why are Republicans so bad at things like FEMA and HUD? The answer may lie in caffeine-free Diet Coke. CAFFEINE-FREE DIET COKE It must have been invented by the same guy who invented the salt-free potato chip and the guilt-free guilty pleasure. I mean, what is the point? This came to mind with only a modest synaptic leap when I read the following formulation: Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well. Just a bit more from Alan Wolfe’s Washington Monthly essay, Why Conservatives Can’t Govern: Contemporary conservatism is first and foremost about shrinking the size and reach of the federal government. This mission, let us be clear, is an ideological one. It does not emerge out of an attempt to solve real-world problems, such as managing increasing deficits or finding revenue to pay for entitlements built into the structure of federal legislation. It stems, rather, from the libertarian conviction, repeated endlessly by George W. Bush, that the money government collects in order to carry out its business properly belongs to the people themselves. One thought, and one thought only, guided Bush and his Republican allies since they assumed power . . . taxes must be cut, and the more they are cut–especially in ways benefiting the rich–the better. But like all politicians, conservatives, once in office, find themselves under constant pressure from constituents to use government to improve their lives. This puts conservatives in the awkward position of managing government agencies whose missions–indeed, whose very existence–they believe to be illegitimate. Contemporary conservatism is a walking contradiction. Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference, expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding. The end result is not just bigger government, but more incompetent government. ‘THEY DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR THIS’ Finally, while we’re warmly welcoming fiscally prudent, fair-minded Republicans and conservatives to reconsider their party affiliation, consider this section of a recent Hillary Clinton speech: I’m encouraged by the number of the people who come to my events who say they didn’t support me last time and tell me that they are Republican, and I always say, “We’re glad you’re here. Welcome.” And I also ask them, “Well, why are you here?” And they always say something like, “I didn’t sign up for all of this.” They didn’t sign up for a government that interferes with personal, private, intimate relations. They didn’t sign up to be the largest debtors in the history of the world where we have to borrow $60 billion a month from China, Japan, and others. They didn’t sign up for Terry Schiavo to be turned into a tragic, political problem. They didn’t sign up for the United States government who totally dismantled the Federal Emergency Management Agency and battled with colleagues and didn’t know what to do. They didn’t sign up for the mean-spirited divisiveness against gays and lesbians and tried to make it somehow a political issue as to the life you lead and who you are. They didn’t sign up for the politicization of science; they didn’t sign up for the Environmental Protection Agency – which has turned into a misnomer – to tell people mercury in the air and arsenic in water won’t hurt you. They didn’t sign up for an FDA that refuses to make a decision about the emergency contraception known as Plan B. They didn’t sign up for a president who denies global climate changes and refuses to deal with reality of what is happening in our world that has far-reaching consequences for our children and our children’s children. There’s a long list why people are suddenly saying, “We didn’t sign up for this.” . . . SO? HAVE YOU SEEN THE MOVIE? The most conservative thing we can do is conserve the human ecosphere. This transcends party politics. In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to. – Roger Ebert
See It Tonight June 16, 2006January 15, 2017 BEST MONEY MARKET AND CD RATES Click here. DUST UP Michael Martin: ‘The media picked up the dust storm but it’s really not unusual. For the past couple of years they haven’t been too common, but I remarked to someone during the storm that it was like returning to normalcy.’ Sharon Shindel: ‘You turn off your lights so that cars following behind you won’t think you are still driving and follow you off the road and run into you.’ B. SMALLER Sandra Wilde: ‘I love Barbara Smaller! I used one of her cartoons for the cover of a book I wrote (you can enlarge the picture to see the cartoon). I would have loved to by the original, but it was way more expensive than the rights, which were only $300.’ IF THEY MADE A MOVE ABOUT YOUR HOME, WOULD YOU GO SEE IT? Well – they have! In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to. – Roger Ebert
Honest Tea-V June 15, 2006March 4, 2017 2ND QUARTER ESTIMATED TAX DUE Helloooooo, procrastinators! Second quarter estimated tax payments are due today. Click here for the instructions and form. HONEST TEA-V I enjoy plugging Honest Tea, in no small part because I own a tea spoon full of its (still private) stock. Well, here‘s its story on TV. (You can read the transcript, but if you have broadband, click to watch.) It’s one of those nice win-wins: tastes good, good for your health, good for the Third World communities that grow the tea, nice kid in his garage goes from an idea and a kettle to a thriving little enterprise. My current favorites: Mint White (all the anti-oxidants of green tea, 70 calories per bottle, one-eighth the caffeine of coffee), Tangerine Green Tea (10 calories, one-fourth the caffeine of coffee), Peach Ooh-La-Long (a little more caffeine), and my caffeine-free favorite, Gold Rush Cinnamon (just 18 calories per bottle). A FURTHER THOUGHT ON MARRIAGE From entrepreneur Bill Stosine, pseudonymous gay Iowan in a 20-year relationship with a surgeon: It ought to make the “family values” crowd happy that gays want to get married and settle down into committed, monogamous, loving relationships. If gay people were allowed to marry each other, one of the benefits would be that they would not be so pressured into marrying a person of the opposite sex merely to try to conform to what society expects. Do you want a gay person to marry YOUR child or grandchild? Wouldn’t it be better to encourage gay people marry each other instead? Is it fair that 30-year gay and lesbian relationships receive less protection than those of heterosexuals who meet in the morning and marry by sundown? A gay couple may have lived in the same home for 30 years, cared for each other through illnesses, comforted each other after the loss of loved ones and shared their entire lives together are denied the rights and protections that strangers who decide to marry on a whim in Las Vegas receive. Britney Spears was married and divorced within 72 hours. On the TV show “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” a man chose his bride from 50 women who paraded onstage in bathing suits and wedding gowns. She wanted his money; he wanted a trophy; neither of them had ever met each other before. The judge who officiated proclaimed the union was based on the love and trust they developed (I guess in the 90 seconds in between their meeting and the wedding). Yet gay and lesbian people who are in committed, long-term relationships are denied the opportunity to marry because their relationships supposedly make a “mockery” out of marriage. Which relationship is the true joke? A faithful gay partner of 30 years has no legal right to make important medical decisions for his incapacitated partner. He gets no help from federal legislation that would protect his job in the event he must care for his sick partner. Insurance companies deny them the opportunity to obtain joint policies for automobile, health and home insurance. When one of them dies, the other may have no legal right to continue living in their home. The deceased’s unaccepting family member can contest a will and leave the long-term dedicated partner bankrupt and without a home. Such insensitive maneuvers aren’t uncommon to gay men and lesbians grieving the loss of a longtime partner. Without marriage, gay couples have tried to establish their rights privately, through contracts. For about $1,000 lawyers provide couples with a will, health care proxy, statement granting each partner durable power of attorney if the other is disabled, and a contract to govern disposition of commonly held property. But such agreements aren’t always upheld in courts, and they are like a fig leaf compared to the broad legal cloak of marriage. I don’t describe a “special right.” The right to marry is so basic to happiness that polls have shown that Americans value a happy marriage, even above money, as most important to their sense of personal worth and fulfillment. I think as anyone matures he or she wants to connect with something bigger than self. To love someone, follow all the threads of each other’s lives, and be legally recognized as family. Society has a compelling interest in encouraging stable, monogamous relationships between adults – straight and gay. People who are married buy houses and save money. They are good neighbors, they tend to be more helpful and quieter than singles. They have a reason to work and stay out of trouble: responsibility to their spouses. There are health benefits to monogamy, especially important in this age of AIDS. Finally, the sheer joy and comfort of having that publicly acknowledged close relationship makes one a happier person, and happy people cause less grief to others. NTMD I covered the remainder of my position yesterday on news that BiDil has received ‘Tier 2’ reimbursement status in about 25% of its market . . . which means that insurers will pick up a lot more of the cost of the drug. I question whether this is good for the financially strapped American health care system (why should it cover an expensive drug when a generic equivalent is available, albeit requiring nine pills a day instead of six?), but it could stem some of the company’s losses and cause a bounce in the stock. Or not. Still hard to see what makes this company worth more than $200 million – it has just one product that may never break even. But now you know what I know.
Save $83,000 on Coffee June 14, 2006March 25, 2012 Thanks to Stephen Gilbert, who found this outstanding resource in the New York Times. It lets you calculate the effect of, say, switching from Starbucks to office-brewed coffee (or bringing your own peanut butter and honey sandwiches to work with you instead of buying them off the cart). Say you buy one $3.50 cup of coffee a day and could get it for 50 cents from the office vending machine or brewing it yourself. I’m not saying you should do this – or save another $3 a day by not buying cigarettes or whatever. But if you did do this, starting now, at age 49, say . . . and if you could invest your savings at 6% over inflation, which is no slam dunk but not nuts, either . . . by the time you were 84 (with another 10 or 15 good years ahead of you, let us pray), you’d have an extra $83,000. Or $122,000, if we’re talking $3 a day on cigarettes, because with the coffee I was figuring 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. With the cigs, we’re talking 365.25 days a year. If you’re 18 today and saved the same $3 a day, by the time you’re 65, with the same 6% assumption, we’re up to $264,000. Of course, if you’re 18, you’re thinking you’ll never be 65. But actually the chances are that you will be – with an an extra $264,000 after tax in today’s dollars in your Roth IRA, for being a bit frugal. It’s cheating – but fun – to assume more than 6% above inflation, but it’s not impossible, either. So if we go wild and assume 7% instead, the $264,000 jumps to $360,000. And remember, this is still just on $3. You could double that if you found a second way to save $3 a day – say by buying one fewer gallon of gas a day by (in the short run) driving more carefully and (in the long run) switching to a car that got better mileage. Hugh Chou has a whole range of other frugality calculators. Play with them, and then set up that Roth IRA if you don’t already have one. There’s tons of good and amusing stuff on his site to ponder.
Loose Ends and Monkey Mail (Really) June 13, 2006March 4, 2017 MONKEY MAIL Chris Kubler: ‘I found that by changing the number in the url of a monk-e-mail I could browse random messages. I stumbled across this one . . .hilarious beyond belief.’ ☞ Oh, boy. I feel like the NSA. (If you try this, I found that altering the third and fourth digits of the first long number-string in the url most reliably pulls up a monk-e-mail.) 19 POUNDS OF CO2 Stephen Gilbert: ‘A gallon of gasoline, which weighs eight pounds, converts to 19 pounds of CO2? This sounds like alchemy. Do you have a cite for this?’ Bobby Corcoran: ‘Apparently, yes. Per the EPA.’ To calculate the CO2 emissions from a gallon of fuel, carbon emissions are multiplied by the ratio of the molecular weight of CO2 (m.w. 44) to the molecular weight of carbon (m.w.12):44/12. CO2 emissions from a gallon of gasoline = 2,421 grams x0.99 x (44/12) = 8,788 grams = 8.8 kg/gallon = 19.4 pounds/gallon CO2 emissions from a gallon of diesel = 2,778 grams x0.99 x (44/12) = 10,084 grams = 10.1 kg/gallon = 22.2 pounds/gallon ☞ So the carbon atom grabs a couple of oxygen atoms on the way out of your tail pipe and, thus laden, swims skyward. DUSTUP Kathryn Lance: ‘You wrote, ‘What was that dust storm that enveloped Phoenix Wednesday? Did you see that? Is this regular occurrence and I just missed the memo?’ Don’t worry, Andy! We get those storms from time to time. They are caused by dry soil and wind, and there may be a few more these days because of the seven-year drought we are in. Which may or may not be connected with global warming, but my guess is probably not. This is a desert, after all. If you’re ever out here on the Interstate and a dust storm blows up, pull OFF the road, turn out your lights, and wait it out.’ ☞ You turn out your lights so it won’t see you? And come and choke you to death? VALUES Christina OSullivan: ‘Why aren’t you pushing ‘Maxed Out‘? I saw it at a film festival and it gave me the willies. I’m seriously thinking of moving back to Canada – I’m too fiscally conservative and socially progressive to be happy in the U.S., and the President had made some comment that ‘new arrivals need to adopt American values.’ I’m not seeing any good reason to keep my kid here to pay for a war no one in my family wanted, or for values we disagree with (profligacy, homophobia). My friends cannot tell me what American values are – finding consensus among 300 million people is pretty tough to do! But if I don’t know what the values are, I can’t adopt them, and if I can’t adopt them [the President thinks I shouldn’t] be here.’ ☞ The movie looks good, from its web site. I hope it becomes available to be plugged. In the meantime, everyone should read this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, DEBT: America’s Scariest Addiction Is Getting Even Scarier. It is a whole issue of articles, like this overview: ‘Reasons to Worry.‘ As to America’s values, I do think we 300 million have some shared values: freedom, fairness, opportunity for all, community, responsibility, honesty, common sense. Even separation of church and state. It’s just that the Republican leadership seems to have lost sight of a few of them. LION KING Harry Mark: ‘Jeremy Siegel will soon have a book out that revisits the potential ‘Boomer Sell-off’ of stocks that will have millions of retiree sellers and no buyers. Any thoughts on that?’ ☞ With luck, there will be several hundred million middle class Chinese and Indian thirty- and forty-somethings buying stocks (from us) to invest in their retirement. Disney said it best: It’s the circle of life. Or so we must hope. CHICKENS AND EGGS Bob Fyfe: ‘I agree with your thoughts on the chicken and the egg – that the chicken-egg is a mutated egg that came from a near-chicken, and therefore, the egg came first. However, I believe that the intent of the question ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ is not specifically the chicken, but rather ‘Which came first, the egg or the animal that laid an egg?’ Your conclusion, based on the fact that it was a near-chicken and not a chicken that laid the chicken-egg, just leads to the question, ‘Which came first, the near-chicken or the egg?’ That, I believe, is the real question.’ ☞ Aha! For the answer to that, I imagine one would have to go all the way back through the evolutionary chain to the miraculous lightning strike that produced the first organism capable of reproduction and decide: Does it appear more chickenlike or ovoid? TREES AND FORESTS Andy Long: ‘A tree failing in the forest will disturb a butterfly that, in turn, will cause a typhoon 10,000 miles away. Faced with a typhoon, does anybody really care whether a tree made a noise?’ ☞ But it did, I tell you – it did! As one of you wisely noted: what if you went into the forest and placed a tape recorder beside a soon-too-fall tree . . . then left, but came back after it had fallen and played the tape to see whether it had made a sound. You’d hear nothing on the tape, but that’s only because the batteries would have run out.